We are very happy to announce that Lyrasis will support the “Reading Chicago Reading” project through mid-2019! We will use the funding to develop a novel visualization dashboard for our data. Such an interactive dashboard should be of interest and use to other libraries, public and academic.

Just before the most recent season ended on April 30, 2018, Mihaela Stoica of the “Reading Chicago Reading” project team sat down with Jennifer Lizak, Coordinator of Special Projects for Cultural and Civic Engagement at the Chicago Public Library to discuss the work that goes into planning, creating, and promoting events for the One Book One Chicago program. With only a few days of respite after the end of a successful 2017-18 program, and just before she started thinking about the upcoming season, Lizak gave us a glimpse of what goes on behind the curtain of this annual citywide program.… Read more

The One Book One Chicago program is a useful optic to capture how readers engage with literature in various ways across time. As contemporary literary experience continues to evolve with and across mobile platforms, and to disperse and thicken in measurable pools of social media data, those who seek to capture and analyze reading behavior increasingly need the tools of data science. As so-called smart cities entangle civic life with code (and its associated rhythms and metrics), the very imagination of the city — by residents, planners, cultural workers, and more — changes, … Read more